I create images … I like to reframe the familiar … How do you want to be seen?

Hoodwinked?

Hoodwinked?We watched The Greatest Showman recently, a last treat of the festive season. Fabulous!“People come to my show for the pleasure of being hoodwinked” says Hugh Jackman as showman Phineas Taylor Barnum in the film.We went to see Scrooge at Leicester Curve at Christmas. Again, fabulous. I recall tweeting afterward, ‘if one could only suspend disbelief forever…’

Loe Bar, Porthleven Cornwall,

I wonder – Suspend disbelief, that life’s not just all a construct?I wonder – Hoodwinked into thinking it’s all worth it?The Showman’s songs go;” ’cause every night I lie in bedThe brightest colours fill my headA million dreams are keeping me awake”“But I won’t let them break me down to dust…For we are glorious”Listening to some BBC Radio 3 Desert Island Discs recently a few people commented on the need for ‘structure’ in their lives.One of Miranda Hart’s desert island choices was an old hymn from her memories of school, to her it resonated ‘structure’. Kirsty Young joked with her about a new motto for life: ‘relax within a structure’.Dame Judi Dench talked about disliking having to ‘split the atom’ and break through the proscenium arch. For Dame Judi, it seems the performance of a character is one thing, but she hates making a real-life one-person personal speech. Directors have spoken about her ‘almost unbelievable ability to switch in and out of character’. Choice… “Acting, should be done” she says.Einstein is quoted to have said: “One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries… of the marvellous structure of reality…. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

One can see that without some element of faith in some structure in our lives, much of it might crumble, fail to grow, and cease to breathe.

The December season for many is a time where we break routines, pause work, and enjoy other activities. It’s a time for entertaining dreams. We celebrate stories from the past – old narratives – a time where the hoary-headed might be especially respected. We entertain fantasy and myth. We suspend disbelief and perhaps we’re hoodwinked.

This holiday season I have beem entranced by a few paralell worlds. The absence of a familiar habitual structured daily routine has invited me to wonder into films, stories, paperback novels and the theatre. From Dickens to Mariani, Moana to Skywalker, Paddington Bear to P.T.Barnum…

It the words of Tom Jenkins “Thank you very much” – A joy-filled thanks for the death of the squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous people in our worlds.

And in the words of Maui “You’re welcome!”. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
― Marcel Proust

You don’t need much suspended-disbelief to feel that perhaps it’s not hoodwink behind the lights, it’s song!